Read Fire and ice for Free Online Page B

was focused on these two. No one seemed to be moving; no one, with the exception of the Alaskan Old Fart, seemed to be breathing. Liam, mindful of his training, gave his gun belt an authoritative hitch and said in his calmest, deepest voice, "What seems to be the trouble here?"
    The woman turned to look at him, and Liam registered three things immediately. Her eyes were the blue of glacier ice and thickly lashed, her well-filled T-shirt had a picture of a beribboned mask with the words "New Orleans Jazz Fest" written beneath it, and she had one of the firmest jaws he'd ever seen. She spoke, moved, and acted with a vigor that belied the lines on her face and the color of her hair, a thick silver swath combed straight back from her face that fell to a neatly trimmed line just above her shoulders.
    "Who in the hell are you?" she demanded. "Give me that."
    She made as if to snatch the rifle from him. He moved it away and she said irritably, "Oh, don't bother, you damn fool, I'm the magistrate for this district."
    He looked at her for a long moment, and then sought out Jim Earl's face in the crowd. Jim Earl gave a confirming nod.
    "Uh-huh," Liam said, but he kept hold of the rifle. "State Trooper Liam Campbell, ma'am."
    "And don't call me ma'am," she snapped. "Makes me feel like I'm a hundred years old."
    "Close enough!" the man at the jukebox said without turning around.
    "Oh shut up, you old fart," the woman said. Again she reached for the rifle, and this time Liam let her take it. "The name's Billington, Linda Billington. You can call me Bill; everybody does." She shifted the rifle to extend a hand. Her grip was dry and firm--one pump, up and down, and withdrawn. She looked him over critically. "Liam Campbell, is it? We heard you were coming. They get that mess cleaned up at Denali?"
    Liam thought "mess" was an inadequate way of referring to the screwup that had cost five lives and his job. "Yes," he said briefly.
    Bright eyes examined him shrewdly. "Buck stopped on your desk, I hear."
    "Yes. Look, what--"
    "Didn't help they were a family of Natives, and you and the other two troopers involved were as white as you can get without bleach."
    "No." He could feel the eyes of many trained upon him. This was even worse than he had expected. "What seems to--"
    "You'll have a lot to prove here, Liam," she said. "But it's a good town. Pretty fairminded bunch of people. They'll judge you, all right, but they'll judge you on what you do here, not what you did before you came here."
    "Yes, ma'am," Liam said woodenly.
    "Bill, dammit. I don't want to be called ma'am until I'm at least a hundred."
    "Won't be long now!" the Old Fart bellowed.
    "Oh shut up," Bill said without heat. "In the meantime, Liam, this here is Teddy Engebretsen, who's got nothing better to do on a fine spring day such as this than to come in and shoot up my bar with my own rifle." She glared at the miscreant, who whimpered behind his bar rag gag. "And then when we think he's all calmed down, he has the gall to go for it a second time!" Teddy whimpered again. "I'm just figuring on what to do with him."
    "Uh-huh," Liam said, because for the life of him he couldn't think what else to say. He shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. He was, after all, the first officer on the scene. It was up to him to establish his sense of authority. He buried his resentment at the woman's blabbering of his private affairs--as private as they get when they've been on the front page of the Anchorage Daily News for a week straight--to most of the population of Newenham. "Well, Ms. Billington--"
    "Who's that?" she demanded. "I told you to call me Bill. That's my name. Liam," she added pointedly.
    So much for establishing his sense of authority. "Okay, Bill," he said, trying an ingratiating smile. She didn't visibly soften, but then the smile hadn't been all that sincere, and he persevered, ever mindful of the clock ticking in the background on the crime scene--if it was one--at the airport,